There are a total of 140,048 artworks in the MoMA spreadsheet, Artworks.csv. The first 10,000 are listed in the table below
Original Table
Gross Quality Check: Percent of blank values in each column
Artists and Artworks
13,736 artists have works of art attributed to them in the MoMa dataset. Note that this number is fewer than the number of artists in the artists spreadsheet.
Over 50% of artists have a single work of artwork in the MoMA. The top 1% of account for 41% of artworks in the MoMA.
Percentiles: Works per Artist
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 95% 99% 100%
1 1 1 1 1 1 2 3 6 16 34 144 5050 
Dates of Artwork: Requires Cleaning
Most works of art have dates. These, however, sometimes have more information than just a 4 digit year (e.g. c. 1930, 1930-32, after 1930, 1930, published 1932.). Simplification of this field will be required before further analysis.
Classifications of Artworks
There are 36 classifications of works of art. Most classifications are based on medium, with the exception of Frank Llloyd Wright Archive. Only 1 work of art has no classification. 678 works of art are noted as “not assigned”.
Media: An Unwieldy Category
There are 21,641 distinct classes of media.
Credit Lines
There are over 7200 distinct Credit Lines.
These include Credit Lines such as “Gift of the artist” which, though they are the same in the data, indicate more than one real-life donor. “Purchase” is another common Credit Line that does not indicate a real life donor. 17% of works belong to such credit lines.
Roughly 1% of works do not have a credit line given in the dataset.
Of the credit lines that do point to individual donors (henceforth individual credit lines), the majority have only a single work in the museum. The list of percentiles below show that fewer than 50% of individual credit lines have more than 1 work, and only 10% of individual credit lines have more than 17 works.
The top 10% of individual credit lines are responsible for 10% for 65% of works in the MoMA.
Percentiles: Works per Credit Line
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 95% 99% 100%
1 1 1 1 1 1 2 3 6 17 38 199 11256 Most credit lines are only “active” for one year. The length of time for which a credit line is active is a measure obtained by subtracting the year in which the credit line’s last work was acquired from the year in which the credit line’s first work was acquired, then adding 1. The list below gives percentiles for the number of years for which a credit line is active.
Percentiles: Years Active for all Credit Lines
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 95% 99% 100%
1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 7 17 39 85 Credit lines that have more works in the museum also tend to be credit lines that have longer lifespans.
Percentiles: Years Active for the 10% of Credit Lines with the Most Works
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 95% 99% 100%
1 1 1 1 2 5 9 14 21 32 41 76 85 # A tibble: 5,765 × 2
CreditLine number
<chr> <int>
1 gift 81998
2 collection 31202
3 fund 26611
4 artist 11783
5 stern 11471
6 louis 11296
7 purchase 10921
8 foundation 10075
9 through 7600
10 acquired 6503
# ℹ 5,755 more rows# A tibble: 30,729 × 1
CreditLine
<chr>
1 Gift of Daniel Morris and Denis Gallion, Historical Design Collect…
2 Gift of Daniel Morris and Denis Gallion, Historical Design Collect…
3 David Whitney Collection, Gift of David Whitney
4 David Whitney Collection, Gift of David Whitney
5 David Whitney Collection, Gift of David Whitney
6 David Whitney Collection, Gift of David Whitney
7 David Whitney Collection, Gift of David Whitney
8 David Whitney Collection, Gift of David Whitney
9 David Whitney Collection, Gift of David Whitney
10 David Whitney Collection, Gift of David Whitney
# ℹ 30,719 more rows